aplay: test_wavefile:807: can't play WAVE-file format 0x0055 !??

[Michael Schwendt]

On Fri, 04 Sep 2009 19:35:43 +0000, William wrote:

> Tried
> ]$ play ~/Music/babycry.wav
> play formats: can't open input file `/home/bill/Music/babycry.wav':
> Unhandled WAV file encoding (MP3).
> Try overriding the encoding: e.g. for an MP3 WAV, `-t mp3'
> ]$ play -t mp3 ~/Music/babycry.wav
> play formats: no handler for given file type `mp3'

Superfluous test, because obviously Fedora's "sox" /usr/bin/play
cannot be built with MP3 support.

> -- no sound.  That is OK, I'll chase your advice down a little.  
> e.g. questions like "Why is a .wav not a .wav?"

The single file extension .WAV does only say what type of container
format is being used (RIFF->WAVE), but not what type of data is
stored within the container.
See e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WAV
or alternative documentation on RIFF WAVE.